Saturday, March 13, 2010

Chennai, March 12: The historic Assembly in Fort St. George saw theenactment of several landmark legislation, including the Hindureligious endowment Act, voting rights for women, child marriagerestraint Act and abolishing the Devadasi system (dedicating girls totemples).

Later, the state enacted legislation to change the name of Madrasstate into Tamil Nadu; that the state would have two officiallanguages — Tamil and English; self-respect marriages Act; 33 per centquota for women in local bodies; equal property rights for women;abolition of hand rickshaws; special reservation for MBCs, minoritiesand Arundathiyars.

In the midst of all this legislative activity, there was room for alot of repartees and witty exchanges. In one such exchange between thetreasury benches and the opposition, the Justice Party's toweringleader Sir A.T. Panneerselvam locked horns with premier Rajaji.

When the first anti-Hindi agitation led by Periyar was at its heightin 1938, Rajaji sought to dismiss it as lacking popular support andsaid only two persons — Ramasamy Naicker (Periyar) and PasumalaiSomasundara Bharathi — were opposing Hindi in the state.

But, Sir Panneerselvam rose to say: "At least two people are opposingHindi. But how many are supporting it? Only you."

Social engineering and bigotryDevangshu Datta / New Delhi March 13, 2010, 0:05 IST

The Economist recently quoted a Tennessee shopkeeper who describedBarack Obama as a "F**ing N***". Those words and the person they weredirected at, together summed up the limits of social engineering.

Obama could not have been elected without the Civil Rights Movementand the social engineering it triggered. However, though the US'social engineering reduced racial bias, it did not eliminate bigotry.The Tennessee shopkeeper's words hark back 50 years, to a time whenracists reviled a charismatic preacher named Martin Luther King inexactly the same terms.

The timeframes required to re-engineer social attitudes aremind-boggling. When a black seamstress, Rosa Parks, was arrested forrefusing to give up her seat in a Montgomery (Alabama) bus to a whiteman in 1955, the 48-year-old Obama was not even a glint in hisparents' eyes. Parks' arrest sparked a bus-boycott, orchestrated byKing. That led directly to desegregation and affirmative action.

India started its social engineering experiments even earlier.Gandhiji was preaching about the evil of untouchability in the 1920s.Legal equality and affirmative action through reservation have beenembedded in the Indian Constitution since its adoption.

Sixty years later, it's evident that those social engineering effortshave not been entirely successful. The reservation concept was flawedfrom inception in its definition of eligibility criteria. It ignoredthe issue of high-caste poverty, for one.

High-caste poverty continues to be ignored, leading to massiveresentment. Increasingly, arbitrary definitions of caste-eligibilityhave also been adopted. The concept of the "creamy layer" is prone toleaks, given inefficiencies of governance.

Yet, flawed as it may be, the social engineering embodied inreservations has created routes out of poverty for millions. It hasempowered the previously marginalised. Mayawati has a genuine shot atbecoming Prime Minister someday. That would have been plainunthinkable for Dr Ambedkar, or even Jagjivan Ram.

Urbanisation, and the mixing it enforces, has also lowered manybarriers. Most cubicle-dwellers neither know nor care about theantecedents of canteen staff. Nevertheless, bigotry persists. Manystill baulk at the thought of marrying out of caste. Professionaldescriptions like leather-worker and sweeper are commonly employed asinsults.

These examples show that social engineering is long-gestation. Anyanalysis of the Women's Reservation Bill has to start from thatcontext. It is undeniable gender discrimination exists. Across India,women lag in terms of education; the population gender ratio isunfavourable. In many professions, women are paid less. Domesticviolence ranging from wife-beating to honour-killings and dowrymurders is endemic.

It would be clearly beneficial if these evils were removed, and theimbalances corrected. The Women's Reservation Bill is supposed toenergise the process of reform and correction. But it could takedecades before outcomes, favourable or otherwise, are apparent.

The immediate outcome is that more women will enter Parliament. Givendynastic biases, the beneficiaries will probably be members ofpolitical families. Will those ladies do right by theirunder-privileged sisters? Panchayat reservation hasn't noticeablyaccelerated the uplift of rural women and that has been in force since1993.

There may have been other ways to correct gender imbalances.Affirmative action aimed at educating girls and adult women may haveproduced quicker returns. Adapting micro-finance models to targetfemale entrepreneurs may also have been more direct.

Chances are, the Bill and its efficacy will still be debated in 2050.But while more women in Parliament may not do much good in the shortterm, it cannot do any harm. At worst, the new MPs will emulate themen they replace by ignoring their responsibilities, screaming andsitting in the Well. If so, at the minimum, more women bailiffs willbe hired. So, that is one guaranteed positive outcome.

Dalit literature of our times, born out of lived experience and art,is a significant contribution both to the collective social conscienceand to our notions of aesthetics.

The best of art for me is that which speaks — in various forms andvoices — of the lives of dispossessed people, of the ways they live,cope and overcome; and of dreams and visions of a better, fairer,kinder world.

Among the most moving reminiscences of a dispossessed childhood that Ihave encountered, for instance, are in a new genre of dalitautobiographies. Close to my heart is Sharankumar Limbade'sautobiography Akkarmashi. Limbade begins with memories of a schoolpicnic to a forest near his village. The dalit children play and eatseparately embarrassed in front of their upper caste classmates bytheir stale dry rotis, chutney and a dried fish. They can smell thedelicacies from the other group: fried paranthas, delicious laddoos,fresh spiced vegetables, gujiyas and so much else. Some girls feelsorry, and give them some vegetables, careful not to touch them.Limbade is embarrassed by their pity. When they have eaten, theteacher asks the dalit boys to gather the leftovers in an old piece ofnewspaper. They can barely wait to eat the scraps, which they attackas soon as their classmates have walked ahead. When he returns homethat night, his mother asks him sourly why he did not also bring someof the leftovers home for the rest of the family to taste.

Gripping record

There are many days when his sisters sleep hungry. His mother makes dowith water, his grandfather with puffs of tobacco. They all await hisgrandmother Santhama, who goes from house to house to beg, the aanchaledge of her sari outstretched in which people throw their leftovers.He waits impatiently. Why is she taking so long? Why has she notreturned? When at last she comes home, she opens out her sari edge toreveal a variety of stale half-eaten foods from the homes of the uppercaste wealthy folk of the village. But, to the little boy, it seems asthough his grandmother stores a little piece of heaven everyday in theaanchalof her sari.

His grandmother gathers cow dung to sell. She looks for undigestedpieces of grain in each cow dung heap before she tosses it into herbasket. She washes these pieces of grain in the village pond, driesthem in the sun, and grinds these into flour. She finally kneads theseinto rotis that she roasts only for herself, as she feeds the familywith brown millet rotis. The little boy suspects that his grandmothermust be eating something special, and snatches a piece from her plateone evening. He bites into it and immediately retches. It tastes likecow dung. He wonders then how his grandmother manages to eat the cowdung rotis so calmly every evening.

L.S Rokade fiercely laments the injustice of unequal birth:

Mother, you used to tell me

when I was born

your labour was very long.

The reason, mother,

the reason for your long labour:

I, still in your womb, was wondering

Do I want to be born-

Do I want to be born at all

in this land?

Where all paths raced horizonwards

but to me were barred…

I found also many poems in dalit literature in India expressinggratitude for their mother's efforts to help the children survivethrough intense self denial and deprivation. Poignant and universal isa poem by Jyoti Langewar, which could be addressed to every mother inthe world who feeds and raises her child amidst challenges of greatwant:

I have never seen you

wearing one of those gold bordered saris

with a gold necklace

with gold bangles

with fancy sandals.

Mother! I have seen you

burning the soles of your feet in the harsh summer sun

hanging your little ones in a cradle on an acacia tree

carrying barrels of tar

working on a road construction site…

I have seen you

sitting in front of the stove

burning your very bones

to make coarse bread and a little something

to feed everybody, but half-feed yourself

so there'd be a bit in the morning…

I write of a woman condemned by her caste to carry human excreta onher head; of a child who grows up on the harsh city streets; of amother who has to teach her child the lesson of how to live withhunger; of a small child who recalls how murderous mobs slaughteredeach member of his family; of the hopelessness of bondage; of peoplewho are dispossessed from their forests and lands. Each time I write,I carry a little of their suffering in my own body and soul. But Ihave still not lived their suffering. Therefore my writing can neverachieve the authenticity and significance of writing of those who havethemselves lived with want and social humiliation.

Precious legacy

A great deal of the world's finest literature and art — much finerthan anything that I have been capable of — is created by men andwomen of empathy and social conscience, who are unable to look atinjustice and suffering, and then just turn their faces away and closetheir hearts. Their art constitutes some of the most precious legaciesof human civilisation, because they represent the struggles,strivings, and aspirations among all peoples in all ages, for a worldof justice and kindness. But what is even more extraordinary aboutdalit literature and art is that it is written directly by people whohave themselves lived through the enormous suffering of want, of emptystomachs, of discrimination, insult and shame as a way of life. And inthe same lifetimes they have not only been able to break off thesechains. They have also acquired the skills, language and idiom, tocommunicate these to people who have never slept hungry, or beenshamed or forced into humiliating occupations and social practicesbecause of their birth. Therefore I regard this to be some of the mostsignificant contributions both to the collective social conscience andto our notions of aesthetics.

The K.R. Narayanan Centre for Dalit and Minority Studies, Jamia MillaiIslamia, Delhi, recently organised an outstanding exhibition ofpaintings by dalit artist Savi and his students. It was imaginativelycurated by his comrade of nearly two decades, Lokesh Jain, whosuccessfully used painting and theatre to initiate a dialogue withstudents about inequity and discrimination.

Savi has developed his iconography over 22 years, influenced by theexperiences of lived discrimination, Buddhist aesthetics andAmbedkar's teachings. He combines on the one hand brush strokes thatare bold and confident, even sometimes deliberately chaotic, immersedin the colours of suffering, despair and rage. He locates within thesesome of the most astonishingly delicate line strokes. His is a uniqueeclectic imagery.

In Savi's oeuvre, we encounter the anguish and anger of dalit peoplewho have suffered millennia of social discrimination. We share withhis dark and brooding images, the burdens of centuries of humiliationof devdasis, or women who are 'dedicated to the gods' and used for sexwork by men of what are called higher castes. Savi's compassion andanger is not in any way sectarian. He suffers equally with thesurvivors of the Gujarat carnage of 2002, and of religious communalviolence, and the fires that burnt their lives, inflame the canvasesof his paintings as well. And interspersed among his images are thehomeless on city streets, devalued and lonely, with only the sky for aroof, and the pavement for a bed.

None of Savi's paintings is portrayal of helpless suffering. Eachcanvas is illuminated by human dignity and the spirit which survivesthe most daunting odds. In his work, there is uncompromisingresistance against injustice and inhumanity. Savi's colours and linestrokes are shorthand for hope for a better, kinder future for all ofhumanity. And for this, he deserves our admiration and gratitude.

Kancha Ilaiah's Post-Hindu India should be essential reading for allwho get panicky about Mayawati's brand of Dalit politics. Unlike thebsp supremo's bid to empower marginalised groups through the levers ofelectoral democracy by wooing a wider 'sarvajan samaj', Ilaiah wantsto launch an all-out civil war between Dalit Bahujans and Hindusociety. This is an angry, provocative book written by a leading Dalitthinker, who is convinced that Hinduism is the root of all evil in thecountry. Indeed, virtually every sentence here drips with venomagainst Hindu society, underlining why we need Mayawati's socialengineering skills to succeed.

Despite the outrageous nature of Ilaiah's onslaught on Hinduism, itwould be unfair and inaccurate to describe him as just a poseur. He isno armchair scholar but a self-made 'organic' intellectual who grew upin an impoverished shepherd Kuruma Golla (not Dalit, but poor backwardcaste) family in the forests of Andhra Pradesh. His mother, who cast aseminal influence on his thinking, was a fierce fighter for hiscommunity and was actually killed while battling forest guards. Sothere is a ring of genuine commitment and passion in whatever Ilaiahsays, however confrontational it may be.

There is also much to learn from the author, a political scienceprofessor at Osmania University, Hyderabad, as he painstakinglyunravels the scientific talent and social skills of various tribal,Dalit and backward caste communities, albeit mainly from Andhra.Ilaiah is right that much of these customs and practices have remainedlittle known, because established social anthropology and history havesought to highlight only the life and times of dominant caste groups.The other refreshing, rather curious dimension of the book—consideringthe author is a man—is its vigorous espousal of women's rights even asHinduism is criticised for keeping down the feminine gender along withother underclasses.

Unfortunately, despite these thought-provoking insights, the bookloses much of its credibility because of the author's obsessive zealto deprecate Hinduism. This lack of balance is evident from Ilaiah'sattempt to tarnish the Hindu faith as "spiritual Fascism" as opposedto "spiritual democracies" like Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. Evenif one was to concede that unlike Hinduism, the others are unburdenedby a codified caste hierarchy, to glorify them as all-embracingdemocratic religions is way over the top, particularly in the case ofIslam and Christianity. He seems to conveniently forget the manyiniquities of the two faiths as they have been practised over thecenturies, and that even if they did not have an internalised castesystem, they were no less guilty than Hinduism in ill-treating orostracising others, both within and outside the community.

Ilaiah describes Hinduism as "spiritual fascism", as opposed to the"spiritual democracies" of Islam, Christianity and Buddhism.

Nor does Ilaiah's utopian dream of a spiritual democracy propelled byany united push from Dalits, backward castes and tribals have anybasis in the real world. We have seen how, in the only state whereDalits have managed to achieve political empowerment, their mainopponent has not been the Brahmins or other upper castes but theYadavs, a community which the author places firmly in the bahujansocial segment. Indeed, this fierce hostility between the Dalits andone of Ilaiah's chosen bahujan communities is the result of thestandoff between the former, who are landless, and the latter, who aretheir landlord oppressors, which renders fallacious the author'slogic. Similarly, Muslims, another social segment in Ilaiah's proposedcoalition, are not unanimous in their approach to Dalits or tribals.In fact, there are many Muslims, particularly in the upper crust, whowould much rather have a Brahmin-Hindu leadership. Even tribals andDalits are not always on the same side, as seen tragically in theKandhamal carnage when tribals massacred Dalit Christians.

Clearly, Ilaiah's prediction about the demise of Hinduism based on thefuture formation of a giant anti-Hindu congregation is far-fetched.Interestingly, the author, otherwise publicly supportive of Mayawatiand her politics, is silent in the book on her social engineeringexperiments in Uttar Pradesh and the remarkable success she has had inmanoeuvring Brahmin-dominated political parties and communities toempower Dalits.

A division bench of the Madras High Court has directed the Tamil Nadu government to pay a monthly pension of Rs 1000 to a Dalit woman, whose husband was murdered by caste Hindus in Tiruchirapalli district.

Justices F.M.Ibrahim Kalifullah and K B K Vasuki directed the government to provide educational allowance to the woman's children in one month,disposing a Public Interest Litigation.

The bench directed Tiruchi District Collector and Adidravidar and tribal welfare department secretary to take steps to pay pension arrears, besides ensuring that the money was disbursed on or before the tenth day of every month.

Petitioner's Counsel said the Government had paid only a lump sum of Rs two lakh and not the monthly pension,as stated under SC and ST tribes (Prevention of Atrocities rules 1995.

The Bench said the government should follow statutory provisions. "In as much as the reliefs have tobe borne by the state by virtue of statutory prescription, it is imperative that such benefits are granted without any further loss of time to the victims," they said.

The Judges asked the Tiruchi Police commissioner to issue suitable instructions to cantonment, police station under his jurisdiction to register cases against all those who allegedly threatened some witnesses when the latter had gone to the first Additional Session court on Septemer 14 last

The Commissioner was ordered to ensure that after the case was registered, it was transferred to an officer in the rank of Assistant Commissioner of Police,as stipulated under SC/ST(Prevention of atrocities Act).The ACP should file the report within one month. Filed At: Mar 13, 2010 15:19 IST , Edited At: Mar 13, 2010 15:1

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